The healthcare industry has endured a long history of problems with caregiver injuries, especially back injuries. One of the many activities that can cause these injuries includes patient lifting, transferring, and repositioning.
In an attempt to remedy these problems, some states and institutions have implemented a no lift policy. Often times, these policies dictate the use of powered mechanical devices to move and/or reposition patients. Despite the existence of numerous powered and non-powered mechanical devices to help caregivers move patients, back injuries continue.
Patients may require repositioning for a number of reasons. For example, for comfort, many patients are placed or place themselves in a position with the backrest of the bed raised. This is also a common position for patients with respiratory conditions, where the backrest is placed at a 30° angle to facilitate breathing. As a result, gravity has a tendency to cause a patient to migrate down the backrest and toward the foot end of the bed. Therefore, caregivers often have to move patients back up the backrest toward the head end of the bed, which is commonly referred to as “boosting” a patient. For ICU patients, this may occur multiple times each day.
Current boosting methods include placing the deck of the bed in a horizontal position (e.g. lowering the backrest if raised) and positioning a caregiver on each side of the bed, who then grasp the existing sheet to manually move the patient to the head end of the bed using a sliding motion. Thereafter, the backrest can then be returned to its raised position. As noted, this process can be repeated over and over again during the course of a day, especially for ICU patients.
The mechanical boosting systems that currently exist include overhead hoists that are external to the bed or winching devices that are mounted at the head end of the bed, which engage sheet and then pull the sheet towards the head end of the bed.
Overhead hoists require separate handling, tracking, and storing and are, therefore, not ideal to use. While some of the winching devices have been incorporated into beds, they tend to operate the same way that caregivers operate in that they slide the patient across the bed support surface, thereby potentially exposing the patient's skin to shear forces. For patients that have been on a bed for an extended period of time, or for patients with fragile skin subject to developing pressure ulcers, these shear forces may increase the risk of injury.